I had a teacher once who taught me the value and rewards of mindfulness. Mindfulness is a concept from eastern religion that simply involves the act of living in the moment and maintaining the clarity of though that so often is hard to achieve. As we live our frenetic modern lives, with work, family, online study and 24/7 connectivity through ever improving social and communication technologies, it is hard to ever take a moment to fully focus on the task at hand. When the task at hand is something important like driving safely on the freeway or something really important like interacting with the ones you love, mindfulness is key to avoiding unpleasant consequences. It also has the positive benefit of helping one achieve positive goals with less strife and effort.This teacher of mine wasn’t a school teacher or spiritual figure. Rather this teacher was someone I encountered in my personal struggle to change my relationship to my own body. Learning to be mindful about my thoughts, words and actions (especially about eating and exercise) helped me to become significantly healthier than I had been. Lately, I had fallen out of the practice of mindfulness in my affairs and have seen the predictable return of some unhealthy results. But today, I have made the decision to again focus on being mindful in all aspects of life and I feel good about what this refocus will mean for me. I thought it would be valuable for me to share some basic info on mindfulness to readers of this blog, as much for their own benefit as for my own. Read this excellent, brief description of what mindfulness means and how it benefits mind and body, written by Soren Gordhamer; an author who counsels individuals and groups on ways to live with less stress and more effectiveness in our technology-rich lives. He has been featured in various media, including GQ Magazine and Newsweek.com, and has taught classes on stress reduction to such diverse populations as youth in New York City juvenile halls, trauma workers in Rwanda, and to staff at Google.

3 Responses to “Mindfulness: Take Time to Think Amid the Rush”

I was lucky enough to be introduced to “Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction” courses through my health care provider in California, and meditation has been a part of my life ever since. For me, I needed to learn how to juggle work, school, family life; but it was interesting to see why many other people joined the group. In fact, half of the students were there to learn how to cope with permanent pain and related issues. Before taking the course, I thought meditation always meant sitting still, but being mindful with everything you do is also meditation. Eating can be meditation, or a walk in the park. This course totally changed my life – thanks Anthony for sharing this with everybody!

Anthony,
This was an interesting, eye opening article. Mindfullness can be a struggle for me, especially in times of stress. These last few months of school and preparing for my job search have left my mind constantly swirling with thoughts and I’m always distracted by them. It is hard to live in the moment and enjoy my family at times because I’m constantly worried about something. I used to walk briskly for 30-45 minutes a day and that seemed to help clear my mind. Now that I am finishing the last week of school I intend to get back into the habit of walking daily again.

This article brings light to a lot of daily activities we take for granted by not showing full respect for the situation at hand. We have to realize that our actions, words, and body language play’s a major role in our interactions with patients, employee’s, and our work. If we continue to do our daily activities half par, then we are only living our lives to that degree. In return this will not allow us to achieve our goals. I feel this is something that everyone should take a look at. It is very beneficial to all people, not only for health reasons, also being able to communicate, and be productive in what ever we do. Thank you for enlightening article. ~ Harmony

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